- OpenAI acquired the URL “chat.com,” which now redirects to ChatGPT.
- HubSpot’s cofounder Dharmesh Shah beforehand owned the area, paying over $10 million.
OpenAI’s splashy acquisition of a four-letter area identify is a brilliant strategic play, branding specialists instructed Business Insider.
On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted “chat.com” on social media, a URL that now mechanically redirects to ChatGPT’s web site.
The area was beforehand owned by HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah, who confirmed that he bought the area to OpenAI after shopping for it in 2023.
Although Shah didn’t disclose its actual sale worth, he beforehand stated he “bought it for greater than I paid.” In his Wednesday publish, he hinted that he had obtained shares in OpenAI on account of the transaction.
BREAKING NEWS: Secret acquirer of $15+ million area chat .com revealed and it is precisely who you’d assume.
For these of you which have been following me for some time, chances are you’ll recall that I introduced earlier this yr that I had acquired the area chat .com for an “8 determine sum”… https://t.co/nv1IyddP5z
— dharmesh (@dharmesh) November 6, 2024
OpenAI didn’t reply to a request for remark from Business Insider.
OpenAI may very well be attempting to make ‘Chat’ the brand new ‘Google it’?
The newest addition to OpenAI’s area assortment, which additionally contains “chatGPT.com” and presumably “ai.com,” suggests a branding shift towards a wider shopper viewers, model specialists instructed BI.
Margarita Polishchuk, head of technique at Clay, a UI/UX design and branding company with shoppers together with Amazon and Google, stated that OpenAI is “securing and strengthening their place” with its new simplistic — and, due to this fact, stronger — area identify.
“It’s very memorable and tremendous on level,” she instructed BI. “Strategy-wise, I believe that for ChatGPT and OpenAI, buying a website like this marks its shift towards a really international viewers.”
While Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot are additionally sticking to one-word monikers, Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, stated the area is the “most intuitive identify” for a way customers consider chatbots.
“I believe the trace that we could also be getting from that is that they could wish to productize their chat as a shopper product,” he stated. The new area “may very well be a really important asset in shopper adoption of a specific expertise,” he added.
The new URL is also the extra sensible results of a standard linguistic error. Nicole Ferry, chief technique officer at Sullivan NYC, a model engagement agency, stated that she typically notices individuals swap the letters of ChatGPT to “GTP.”
“‘ChatGTP’ truly redirects to NinjaChat AI, which is clearly not OpenAI’s product,” she stated. “So having chat.com is just additionally simply a neater URL to make use of in a name to motion.”
She additionally added that the corporate’s resolution to deal with “chat” slightly than “GPT” makes the product extra approachable.
“It sounds straightforward,” she stated. “I can do this. I chat on my cellphone with my pals or in DMS or no matter. It looks like one thing I can already do versus one thing I’ve to study.”
While “chat” has been part of the English lexicon to point a human interplay, Polishchuk stated this marks the incoming of a “main technical shift” in how individuals could understand the time period.
“So now any consumer that isn’t actually tech savvy, once they kind in chat.com, they are going to immerse themselves into the world of LLM and AI,” she stated.
While individuals may not fairly be saying, “Go ChatGPT it,” Polishchuk stated buying a website with simply the phrase “chat” may propel the AI to turn into equally ubiquitous, like “Googling.”
